Best Steakhouse With History (2004)

Bastien's isn't retro; the rest of the world is. If you're looking for the cocktail culture of the '50s, a time capsule of early-'70s swinger swank still sealed and unchanged, then head straight for Bastien's. If anything in this place has come around again into a third generation of recycled cool, it's only a happy accident. The Bastien's we know and love today came to life on January 1, 1959, and was an instant hit, a destination in a time when there weren't many. Truman Capote hung out here, fer chrissakes. And forty years later, the trappings of Bastien's best years are still intact. So are the deals: You can still get an entire dinner -- good steak, drinks and dessert included -- for under thirty bucks, and eat like a successful aluminum-siding salesman would have on a Friday night forty years back. Like they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day, and the batteries on Bastien's Timex ran down a long time ago.